Dear Marion,

The conundrum which perplexes you seems to me at least to
have an extraordinarily simple and direct solution. Unfortunately
I'm no musician, but let's presume for purposes of argument that
I were. I sit down at my organ and play for example, the Toccata
Adagio and Fugue in C major, then the while I play it, my performance
of that music which was written almost 300 years ago, does not take
me back into the past; it becomes a present event of the utmost
immediacy. Or I sing a song, for example:

Am Brunnen vor dem Tore,
Da steht ein Lindenbaum:
Ich traeumt in seinem Schatten
So manchen suessen Traum.

Ich schnitt in seine Rinde
so manches liebe Wort;
Es zog in Freud und Leide
Zu ihm mich immer fort.

Ich musst auch heute wandern
Vorbei in tiefer Nacht,
Da hab ich noch im Dunkel
Die Augen zugemacht.

Und seine Zweige rauschten,
Als riefen sie mir zu:
Komm her zu mir, Geselle,
Hier findst Du Deine Ruh!

Die kalten Winde bliesen
Mir grad ins Angesicht;
Der Hut flog mir vom Kopfe,
Ich wendete mich nicht.

Nun bin ich manche Stunde
entfernt von jenem Ort,
Und immer hoer ich's rauschen:
Du faendest Ruhe dort.

The music and the poetry are immediate to me: they are as
precious as any immedicary I exprience. They recapitulate the
past and translate it for me into the present in the most
compelling manner. Indeed, it is the characteristic of literature,
of written and of spoken words in general, that on occasion they
constitute a contemporary reality of utmost cogency. And
that's the solution to your conundrum: it's precisely because
to my sensibility, art in general and literature in particular
are so overwhelmingly immediate and compelling, that I am
able to a large extent to ignore the claims of contemporary
culture.  There is no reason why, what Lessing and Hoelderlin
and Kleist wrote two hundred years ago should not be much
more meaningful to me than what Thomas Friedman or Gail Collins
wrote two days ago. My writing, both essay and fiction, is
conscious, deliberate effort to compose a "conceptual world"
according to my own specifications.  The various scenes that
I describe in my novels, in Boston, in Cambridge, in the White
Mountains and in the Canadian Rockies, become "my places" in a
very specific sense, and for me they are never the same again.
What's wrong with that? I can do without Hemingway, without
Faulkner and without John Updike. That I'm all alone with my
literary experience is my tough luck, but I see no need to
apologize.  I want to get back to the Katenus Mansion on Main
Street on the Island.  There's going to be an awful lot going
on there this weekend for which I am responsible.

Tomorrow at 9:52 p.m., I'll meet Margrit at Logan Airport.
She has been in Konnarock alone, nauseous and vomiting
for five days.  Dr. Peters, the latter-day successor to
my father's practice in Konnarock, thinks Nargrit is bleeding
from her stomach. She is arriving on U.S. Airways flight 1776
from Charlotte NC. Klemens and Margaret and I will take care
of her here until she's better.

Jochen